Today’s lesson: why some people might feel like everyone hates them...

Introduction

At some point in our lives, we might have felt the feeling that people were looking at us in an ugly way, rejecting us with their gestures, and even at some point, we could even think hatred being emanated towards us.

Perhaps it is due to feelings of loneliness, lack of communication with others or because we are going through a bad phase in our personal life. Wondering why other people seem to reject us or hate us is a thought that emerges in times of crisis, when our self esteem seems to fall apart at any moment and we feel bad about everything that surrounds us. If we get too stressed over this feeling of rejection, it may lead to more serious problems such as depression or fear of relating with others. This is why it is important to detect this idea in time without letting it consume our thoughts, analyze it and figure out a way to completely eliminate it, in order to avoid this type of thoughts affect us more than they should.

At the end of the day, you’re going to notice that limiting beliefs have a tendency to encourage an individual to live below their true potential. | Source

Because when it comes to other people and especially if they don’t know us, the most probable thing is they have literally no feelings towards, whether positive or negative ones, so if an individual believes other people in general are hating him, it could be a problem merely caused by his own perception of things.

Why would anyone develop this negative perception?

These types of thoughts can appear because of different reasons, maybe we are experiencing a lack of love after going through a breakup and we feel that no one wants to have us as a partner. Or perhaps throughout our childhood we have not received enough love and affection which make us unconsciously believe that we do not deserve to feel someone's affection. We will have to deal with these feelings according to their root cause, and this way, we can solve them for good.

The lack of love we might feel could be solved by focusing in developing our own self love, leaving behind our insecurities and strengthening our self esteem, if we don’t love ourselves no one else will. If we replace this lack of love coming from others with expressing care and affection towards ourselves, we will eventually be able to have a good resilience, which is nothing more than a good capacity to face the problems and overcome the setbacks of life.

Resilience consists in “... the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.” | Source

Many times, these thoughts are part of a broader group of beliefs that can limit us (which will be discussed below) and do not usually have a real foundation because there are always going to be people who love us and value us but we can not appreciate it because there is a belief that is limiting this perception.

... once you’ve developed a core belief, you’ll pay close attention to any evidence that reinforces your belief. So if someone who believes she’s stupid passes nine tests but fails one, she’ll conclude the one failed test serves as further proof she’s unintelligent. | Source

Feeling that nobody cares for us, feeling rejected or even hated, is obviously not a pleasant experience. We as humans are inherently social, we live with people all around us and we need someone to care about our well being, so we can be able to interact with them comfortably, someone who is constantly aware of how we feel and who also cares about our emotions. If we have the belief that there is really nobody who is worried about what we feel, we will eventually experience a sense of helpless and will feel little understood by those around us, like if we didn’t have a place to which we belong.

Now, if someone is really taking seriously the possibility that nobody loves them nor appreciates them, and therefore they arrive at the flawed conclusion consisting in the fact that they are hated, then this person should really stop for a few minutes to really ponder about this apparently dangerous reality.

Because by doing so, this person will surely realize there is not much truth in those beliefs, but if they are still present in his head and remain in there persistently throughout time, then it might be because what he is facing is a limiting belief that results from having to go through negative experiences in the past.

Handling limiting beliefs

Limiting beliefs are defined as follows:

Simply put, limiting beliefs refers to a false belief. This false belief is gained by the individual, as a result of that same individual making an incorrect assumption about something in life. | Source

Limiting Beliefs are beliefs that we hold about ourselves and the world that become part of our identity... these Limiting Beliefs become very strong and hard to change and end up shaping a lot of our behaviors, thoughts and feelings. | Source

Limiting beliefs are simply thoughts or ideas that are usually unconscious and tend to be repeated over and over in people’s head, capable of preventing anyone from acting with their greatest potential. These beliefs tend to be related to the person in question, about his qualities and skills, but could also be about the world and the people around him, some specific examples of limiting beliefs would be:

Women only want men who have a lot of money
Guys are only interested in younger women. | Source

Any generalization that we use to justify our lack of action in a particular circumstance, could be a limiting belief.

Each person formulates their beliefs in their own way and they do not have to be exactly the same as with those stated above, but it should be accepted that many people share these thoughts in a similar way, therefore, analyzing to what extent these phrases are true would be the most important step in order to overcome them. Determining the veracity of what these people think and even most importantly, why are they thinking in such a limiting way is essential to get rid of these types of thoughts. Many times, people might relate a discomfort or a feeling of emptiness with the idea that they are alone and nobody wants them, this happens because it is not easy to name it nor to correctly detect abstract sensations such as emptiness, and our mind resorts to think something simple and easy to understand.

People must detect all beliefs, or at least the majority, that prevent them from properly relating to others and to make mistakes when interpreting how others see them. Many times, people act without knowing that many of their thoughts can be limiting them and for this reason, taking the time to really reflect about it and properly identifying those limiting beliefs can be a little bit challenging, and also a humbling experience, because knowing they are sabotaging themselves with some of their own thoughts is not something to be happy about.

In the same way that our tastes and opinions about what surrounds us change over the years as we grow wiser, the same happens to the image we have about ourselves, it changes over the years. Once a person managed to detect those limiting thoughts that complicate his live, it is time to put this knowledge into practice and neutralize them with a proper reasoning that will leave very clear the fact this limiting beliefs were indeed wrong.

Conclusion

After observing, analyzing and questioning what we think, we have to turn our beliefs around if they are mistaken. In this way, if we change and turn negative thoughts into positive ones, they will feed new and reassuring beliefs about ourselves, and a good self-esteem will help to develop resilience as mentioned before, so that, if at some point in the future we suffer again, we will have new tools to avoid feeling like if nobody loves us or that everyone hates us.

Take time to consider which beliefs might be limiting your potential. Perhaps you are smarter than think, more capable than you give yourself credit for, and stronger than you know. | Source

At the end of the day, our mind can be our most powerful tool to solve whatever issue we may encounter in life, but if it becomes an obstacle then it is of great importance for us to take the necessary measures in order to leave this problems behind.